Wireless or cellular service providers as well as device manufacturers are continually challegened to deliver value and convenience to consumers by providing, e.g., compelling services, applications, and/or content. One area of development relates to the integration of digital information and services with tangible objects, such as printed media, clothing, various physical products, etc. Historically, producers and manufacturers of such tangible objects have not been able to take advantage of the growing availability of digital information. However, with the development of low-cost radio frequency (RF) memory tags that can be associated with an object, digital information can be linked to any object tagged with such an RF memory tag.
In addition to RF memory tags, further development has revolved around near field communication (NFC) Forum type tags that may be incorporated into/associated with tangible objects. The NCF Forum is an industry consortium geared to further developing and improving NFC technology. Based on NFC technology, the NFC Forum created the NFC Data Exchange Format (NDEF) and the NFC Forum type tag operation, where NDEF refers to a data format utilized for encapsulating and identifying application data exchanged between NFC-enabled devices.
An NFC device may refer to various electronic devices, such as mobile telephones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), personal computers (PCs), or any other suitable electronic device. An NFC tag may refer to a particular type of contactless card/tag that is able to store NDEF-formatted data and is compatible with one of four currently implemented NFC Forum tag platforms, i.e., Type 1 tags, Type 2 tags, Type 3 tags, and Type 4 tags. The various tag types may differ in terms of memory size, communication speed, and/or read/write/re-write capabilities. For example, a Type 1 tag may have a memory size of 96 bytes (expandable to 2 kbytes), read and re-write capabilities (and user-configurable to be read-only), and have a communication speed of 106 kbits/s. Type 4 tags, in contrast, may have a variable memory size ranging from 4 kbytes to 32 kbytes, are pre-configured by the manufacturer to be read and re-writable or read-only, and communicate at speeds of up to 424 kbits/s.
Application dat is typically stored inside an NFC tag by first encapsulating the application data into an NDEF message, and second, into the data structure specified by the NFC Forum Type tag platform. The NDEF message and platform identify the type of application data, e.g., Uniform Resource Locator (URL), v-Card, or image, etc., stored on the NFC tag. In operation, for example, a user may “touch” his/her mobile telephone to an object containing an NFC tag, such as a business card embedded with an NFC tag. The mobile telephone may then read the NFC tag and retrieve and save v-Card information stored on the NFC tag. Other currently-implemented uses for NFC tags include, e.g., retrieval of a web page link from the NFC tag, or establishing a Bluetooth connection to enable data transfer via a direct connection/link. In this case, the Bluetooth link is established by bringing an NFC device in close proximity to another NFC device, and using NFC to pair the devices. However, larger amounts of data may not be transferred over an NFC connection since the NFC bandwidth is too slow for transferring large data amounts, hence the use of the Bluetooth connection.
Certain drawbacks arise in the context of NFC tags as currently/conventionally implemented. For example, in a scenario where a URL is stored in an NFC tag, other additional connections are required, e.g., to access the Internet, or in the case of the aforementioned Bluetooth scenario, to another NFC device. Moreover, current implementations are not able to ensure that the desired content supposedly associated with the URL is actually still available. Further still, delays associated with such scenarios are simply too long for a positive user experience.
Additionally, NFC tags as currently implemented and/or envisioned are not able to provide sensory feedback (e.g., sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) or “feelings” associated with objects in a cost efficient and responsive manner. That is, current and conventional implementations of NFC tags fail to take advantage of the ever-improving audio speakers that are being implemented in electronic devices, haptic displays, and smell circuits. Furthermore, and in addition to the aforementioned lack of NFC bandwidth for large amounts of data, current NFC tags are too small to even store large audio clips or haptic touch maps.